


The Stranger's Feet Were Hooves

by FyrMaiden



Series: With Hairspray and Denim [6]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 13:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3070409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine, Kitty reflects, has always made her feel safe. For that, she's glad to have known him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stranger's Feet Were Hooves

Blaine finds Kitty standing barefoot outside of the marquee, her shoes in her hand, a light cardigan over her shoulders, and her dress hitched around her knees to avoid trailing it in the grass. It’s on loan and she doesn’t want to risk the charge that will be incurred if there are grass stains on the hem. She doesn’t hear him approach, but she smells the citrus of his cologne when he is close, and she closes her eyes to savour it for a moment. He stands beside her quietly until she turns her face to him, takes in the trim cut of his tux and the way the sparkling lights reflect in the gel in his hair to form a halo around him, and she thinks how that isn’t entirely wrong because, for her, Blaine Anderson has been something of an angel and not so long ago, that thought alone would have felt like blasphemy. 

Inside the marquee, Kitty can hear the beat of the music, can hear the laughter rolling out and washing over them where they stand. “Come back inside,” Blaine says, soft in the shadows. She sighs and shakes her head, and she knows her smile is brittle and sad.

“I can’t,” she says. “Not yet.”

Blaine is silent for a long moment, and then his hand squeezes hers. She can feel the warm band of metal around his finger. She adds that to her list of improvements knowing Blaine has affected in her. Fifteen year old Kitty would never have found herself a guest at anyone’s same sex marriage, much less at one where the grooms could justifiably be considered her friends. She takes another shaky breath and exhales it towards the stars overhead. When she looks down again, Blaine has vanished.

When he comes back, he has two glasses of champagne and a plate of food. He nods toward the marquee. “Sit with me,” he says. She looks at the ground beneath the windows and feels a laugh she can’t completely repress.

“Not in the mud,” she replies, gesturing her dress. She does let her shoes fall to the ground, though, and the hem of her gown. Blaine’s laugh is warm, and he hands her the glasses and the plate. “Okay,” he says, wiping his palms on his legs. “Wait here. Kurt has a blanket in the car. Just in case.”

“In case of what?” 

Blaine quirks an eyebrow and she pulls a disgusted face. “Ew!” she calls after his retreating form. “Just, ew!”

He returns to her again with a blanket over his arm, which he lays on the dirt and sits on, stretching his legs out in front of him and leaning back against the tent gently. He pats the ground. “Sit with me,” he says. She hands him the plate and one of the glasses, lowers herself gracefully to sit beside him. The canvas is cold on her spine through the thin material of her cardigan but it doesn’t matter when Blaine invites her to rest her head on his shoulder. “Talk to me,” he says gently. She takes a sip from her champagne flute and picks at the edge of a vol-au-vent as she lets the bubbles sit on her tongue for a moment. 

“You make me wish I believed in love,” she says when she’s let the alcohol flow through her, warming her skin slightly. She takes another sip and feels it tingle in her fingers. When she looks at him, his eyes are a little sadder than they should be on his wedding day, and she wants desperately to take the words back. But they’re out there now, floating in the air around them, so she bites her lip and waits for them to roost. Behind them, fresh laughter bubbles over, and Blaine pops a finger sandwich into his mouth and chews thoughtfully.

“You don’t?” he says eventually, and she shrugs a shoulder, stares at the tips of her painted toenails and then at the band wound around Blaine’s finger now, today. 

“Not the way I think you do,” she replies. In his face, she can see his need to say the right words, to make everything better for her, as if he can cure the world with optimism and positivity. Blaine wears many of his scars on the outside, and she admires him for that, for his vulnerability. Her own wounds are much deeper, much harder to reach. Blaine makes her want to try, even here and now, where she feels so incredibly alone. “It’s okay, Blaine,” she says, soft with him in a way she isn’t often. “I’m working on it. You don’t have to.”

“I want to help,” he says. “I just - don’t know how.” His laugh is more an exhalation of frustrated emotion, and she puts her hand over his heart. He is steady and warm and here, and entirely too good for the mess that she is, or has been. If he’d responded to her awfulness when they were kids the way she would have done, she knows she wouldn’t be the person she is.

“Thank you,” she says, and he blinks and looks at her. 

“For?”

“For being you.” She smiles and reaches for her shoes, pulls them on with deft fingers and pushes herself to her feet. She holds out her hand and helps him up. He rises with surprising grace, dusts off the seat of his pants and cants his head. Around his ears, the gel is losing its battle with time and the natural resistance his hair puts up. She tamps a curl down, and he licks his fingers and presses it back into place. He looks dapper and handsome, and exactly like everything she would love to have for herself. “Dance with me,” she says.

“Here?”

“No,” she laughs, and nods inside. “In there.”

Blaine agrees, and holds out his arm. Kitty gathers the blanket and Blaine takes the glasses, and they head together into the marquee. Once their arms are empty, Blaine takes her onto the dancefloor, where she spins in his arms and feels like a fairy princess for a moment until the music slows. She’s ready for Blaine to break away, to find his husband and dance with him, but he doesn’t. He only holds her closer, allows her to sway with him to the swirl of the music.

And that is, she knows, as their minutes draw both out and to a close, what she loves the most about him. It hasn’t been true of all of the men in her life, but Blaine makes her feel safe. He wants nothing more from her than her presence, and that’s why he invited her to be here, why he invited her to his wedding. She presses her hand more firmly to his shoulder and rests her cheek against his as she she whispers another quiet thank you that she hopes he can hear.

Because he can’t fix her, he can’t make her okay, but everything about him reminds her that she doesn’t have to be afraid.


End file.
